Clarity on PLM

One of my favorite parts of going to conferences is learning what cool projects, products, and other cool accomplishments manufacturers have leveraged PLM for. In addition to sharing some very positive news on the market (see PLM Keeping up Momentum: Siemens PLM Analyst Conference 2011)  the recent Siemens PLM analyst event showcased a number of Siemens’ customers getting real business value from PLM. I thought I would share a few examples with you. And if you want, you can hear for yourself how excited I was in this interview with Dora Smith of Siemens PLM.

Aerojet

One of the great things about PLM is that it can solve a wide variety of problems. In Aerojet‘s case, PLM is helping improve product quality. I blogged about Siemens Dimensional Planning and Validation (DPV) solution in Circling Back on Quality with Siemens PLM and more generally about the significant benefits available from integrating Quality Lifecycle Management (QLM) in PLM. It was great to hear a first hand example of how a company is bringing quality and engineering together, or “closing the loop on quality.” One of the really cool things – which unfortunately we didn’t actually see an example of because Aerojet serves the defense industry – is that they now display quality information (SPC data) in the context of the product – in this case graphically displaying it against a JT model of the product. John Hodur, Principle Quality Engineer explained how Aerojet is integrating inspection results with tolerance results to develop tolerance stackups using actual data. A great example of how PLM is expanding into new areas, and integrating new people and processes into Engineering.

Edison2

Sometimes at conferences you not only get to hear about cool projects, you get to hear from really cool people. Yes, this is a conference focused on the intersection of engineering and software and I said cool. Really cool. The presenter was not only an engineer that worked on a really cool project to design a ground-breaking, record setting light car, but also a race car driver. So we have gone from rocket scientists to race car drivers in one post. He explained how Edison2 won the Progressive Insurance X Prize contest to build the most fuel-efficient and  safe car that can carry four passengers and luggage. The results were impressive. What was also impressive was how excited he was at the toolset he used, Solid Edge. He explained how the new Synchronous  Technology in Solid Edge helped them rapidly design (and more importantly redesign) the car as they went through multiple design iterations.

Rolls Royce

Another great PLM facet highlighted at the conference was integration of PLM into other systems and the positive impact it has on quality. Gordon McKechnie expressed that Rolls Royce is critical to their customers and that its products “work in industries where if a product fails it is no OK.” What an understatement! He explained that to pursue high quality – yet still maintain a very competitive cost – Rolls Royce wants to have one system managing the product across the enterprise. He explained that they have lots of point systems, but are driving to a single source of data. This is not just for PLM as most people think of it – they believe in “totally integrated PLM” that expands from product design all the way into manufacturing. In his words, “integration is key, and integration is a problem today.” A problem that Rolls Royce is leading the charge to overcome. To that end, Rolls Royce is on the leading edge of ERP-MES integration and uses both Siemens’ Teamcenter PLM and Simatic IT MES solutions. Oh and just so you don’t think we went from rockets to cars and didn’t include anything else cool, Rolls Royce makes aircraft engines – another pretty cool (and highly complex) product. Just in case you thought they made cars…

So that’s what I hear from Siemens PLM’s customers. There were other stories as well, but these were the ones that I decided to share. What do you think? Pretty cool stuff? What have you done with PLM?

A quick peek into some research on … the business value of transforming product documentation to rich, interactive communication. The report, Tech-Clarity Insight – The Business of 3D Technical Communications: Evolving Strategies to Document Products, explains how companies are changing their views on technical documentation to a more strategic approach, including the use of 3D to go beyond flat, static documents to incorporate richer, interactive, more realistic representation of products.

The Research Findings

At first glance, product documentation may not seem like a valuable topic, let alone a sexy one. After all, how much fun can you have with a user manual? It’s true that many companies look at product documentation as a necessary evil. Even for companies that take that view, the report provides insight on how to increase the quality and decrease the cost of product documentation. But there is more strategic, business-level value available than just saving money (not that anyone should turn savings down given today’s tight product margins). Even those that take a tactical, operational view of documentation should recognize that delaying product documentation processes can result in delaying time to market – which in turn has a big impact on market share and profitability. And for international companies, they can also save significantly on translation because they can rely more on images and significantly reduce text.

Better processes can help operationally. But the report goes further than that. The report shares the experiences of three manufacturers:

• NACCO Material Handling Group, a division of NACCO Industries that designs, engineers, and manufactures material handling equipment
• S&C Electric Company, a global provider of equipment and services for electric power systems
• AS&E, a producer of state-of-the-art x-ray detection solutions

These companies explain how they have transformed their views from product documentation to technical product communications. They have found ways to leverage their existing 3D CAD assets to gain some significant business advantages, including:

• Higher engineering efficiency by allowing documentation specialists more freedom to create images from 3D models
• Improved effectiveness of documentation & communication by including 3D, animation, and interactivity
• Better collaboration with downstream functions (that don’t have CAD) to improve product designs and product quality
• Reduced potential for errors in manufacturing and enabling a “deign anywhere – build anywhere” strategy
• Improved service performance leading to improved customer experience and uptime

Implications for Manufacturers

Many manufacturers have moved to 3D CAD solutions, and reaped significant rewards in design quality. Manufacturers with 3D CAD in place have an opportunity to extend the value of their CAD assets by reusing them for product documentation. At a minimum, it will create efficiency and save some time and money. As Bill Abely of AS&E is quoted in the report:

“The day before the first printing of our manuals a tech pub writer overheard a conversation about a change that he wasn’t aware of. The change affected 50 images! Including the change would normally take about ten days – instead it was ready by the next afternoon.”

How long would that take your company? Used effectively, 3D technical communication can also provide some significant benefits by improving the performance of those that need to know the most about products – including Manufacturing, Service, Customers, and even Marketing. The result can be better quality products, reduced cost, and a better customer experience. From my perspective, it looks like it is time to rethink product documentation.

So that was a quick peek into some recent research on the business of documenting products, I hope you found it interesting. Does the research reflect your experiences? Do you see it differently? Let us know what it looks like from your perspective. Please feel free to review more free research and white papers about PLM and other enterprise software for manufacturers from Tech-Clarity.

I had the chance to talk with … PTC about the important role that PLM plays in ensuring product quality. PTC shared their views on quality and reliability and followed up by giving me some detailed insight into their Relex reliability management solution and how it fits into the PLM ecosystem. It turns out PTC is doing quite a bit to bring a comprehensive Quality Management System (QMS) to their PLM community.

Putting the Q in PLM

The discussion was a follow up to some of my past posts (rants?) on expanding PLM to include quality management. Addressing quality early in the product lifecycle offers significant advantages by designing quality into the product up front. I have written in the past about the importance of Quality Lifecycle Management (QLM) and Quality Risk Management (QRM), and proposed that Quality Risk Management might be the missing link in PLM. My belief is that quality is inherently a product lifecycle issue and that integrating quality management into PLM helps companies design for quality and then close the loop between Engineering and product quality in the field.

What do they Do?

So where does PTC, one of the leading PLM vendors, come into play when we start talking about quality management? Well, PTC has been busy. They acquired Relex in 2009 and NetRegulus in 2007. With this combination PTC covers a large spectrum of the quality management systems spectrum. PTC helps companies develop quality requirements, and then trace them through design FMEAs to process FMEAs and all the way to control plans (including test procedures). This ensures that those criteria that are critical to quality are both designed into the product and designed into the quality assurance processes. At this point, the quality plans are ready to be passed on to execution systems (as shown in this diagram on integrating PLM, ERP, and MES).

Beyond planning, PTC also offers tools to help improve quality and reliability by capturing failures, documenting test data, developing non-conformance reports, and analyzing trends. PTC supports quality management processes such as FRACAS, 8D, and CAPA that are designed to help companies learn from failures and observations to improve quality. With these processes, PTC is executing on a vision to close the loop on product quality.

What don’t they do? I think it is important that PTC recognizes their role in the product lifecycle. Another main portion of QMS supports the execution side of manufacturing. This involves shop floor data collection and statistical process control (SPC) among other capabilities. PTC is sticking to the planning side of quality and design for quality, along with capabilities to provide feedback on quality performance to engineers. A good move on their part, because the execution side is crowded and more integrated to manufacturing execution systems (MES) than PLM.

What do they Offer?

Relex is PTC’s suite of solutions targeted at improving quality, reliability, safety, and risk management. NetRegulus is now a part of Windchill QMS which covers complaints, CAPA, non-conformance, and supports quality audits. Windchill QMS helps companies show due diligence and comply with industry standards for quality. Together, PTC has developed a suite of quality solutions that covers a broad spectrum of quality management needs that complement and integrate with their other products. PTC has clearly made a statement that quality management is a big part of PLM. Expect more from PTC, including increased integration of QMS into Windchill and PLM workflows. Integration will be a key value driver for PTC’s offering in a market where QMS systems themselves are frequently built of a collection of standalone tools. PTC has the opportunity to offer not just an integrated application that allows integration, communication, and data flow between QMS applications but also links into Windchill BOMs, ECRs, ECOs, and other product data. Pretty compelling.

So that’s what I hear from PTC, I hope you found it useful. What do you think? What else should I have asked them?

I had the chance to talk with … Siemens PLM a couple of times in response to my post on Quality Lifecycle Management titled Expanding PLM’s Pervue – Quality and Risk Management. While I mentioned that some of the major PLM vendors had developed solutions for quality management, I did not mention Siemens PLM. The reason for not mentioning them, I explained, is that I didn’t know about their solution! I since had a good conversation with the Siemens team about their offering. It is interesting, takes a bit of a unique approach, and I think it is worth talking about. So here it is!

What do they Offer?

What I find unique about the Siemens Dimensional Planning and Validation (DPV) solution is that it does not replicate what standalone Quality Risk Management (QRM) and Quality Lifecycle Management vendors offer. It is a relatively unique approach, which also makes it a complementary solution.  One of the main things things that manufacturers can do to improve quality is to “close the loop” on quality by feeding actual results back into the manufacturing and design processes to improve quality. That is what the Siemens solution does.

Providing feedback on quality to upstream functions  is one of those concepts that is obvious to most people, few will disagree with, but most companies don’t do. Why? It is hard to cross organizational boundaries and get people to work together. Frequently, Engineering and Manufacturing don’t have access to information (or at least information that they trust.) Sometimes, as I am sure some will point out, they just don’t listen. What I like about the Siemens solution is that the feedback is quantitative and based on actuals. In fact, what the solution does is take actual dimension product measurements (typically from automated testing equipment) from the shop floor and provide feedback upstream.

By tracking actual dimensional results by plant, production run, and other manufacturing parameters the solution offers the ability to analyze performance over time and look for improvement opportunities. One of the key elements that makes this beneficial is the analytical engine behind it, similar to other trends to use business intelligence (BI) in PLM. Another nice feature is that the results become a part of the PLM data model, and can even be shown against the 3D model. The goal is to provide feedback to Engineers so they can adjust designs, features, tolerances, and inspection points to improve quality by design. In short, they are closing the loop.

Siemens explained the value in simple terms, which I will use as the last words for this section. I think these words some sum up the difference in their solution, because it is based on actual results, uses analytics and allerts to provide the right information to Engineers, and puts the results into the product/PLM context to be shared broadly across the enterprise. In their words, the solution helps manufacturers:

“Find it quicker, fix it faster, share the knowledge“

Who do they Work with?

This solution is primarily intended for discrete manufacturers with dimensionally based parts. The early development customer that Siemens worked with is in the automotive industry, where quality is critical and production volumes are high enough to make this feedback useful. Other similar industries can benefit from this as well.

So that’s what I hear from Siemens PLM, I hope you found it useful. What do you think? What else should I have asked them?

I had the chance to talk with … both Dyadem and MasterControl earlier this year about their Quality Lifecycle Management (QLM) solutions. The conversations are examples of how PLM is expanding to cover additional product-related processes. Quality is among a number of product lifecycle processes - including compliance, service, product costing, direct sourcing and potentially others- that are logical extensions to PLM. QLM, however, is still a standalone solution for the most part. So what is QLM, and how does it fit into the product lifecycle and into product lifecycle management (PLM)?

Note: OK, this is really a combination of two 1:1 conversations, I wonder if that is a 2:1 or 2:2? So let’s call it a “What I Learned” and follow up with the Dyadem and MasterControl stories later this week.

What is Quality Lifecycle Management?

Quality is an important aspect of any product, and key to the profitability of a product across its lifecycle. Quality management plays critical roles in the product lifecycle, including:

• Accelerating time to market (particularly in regulated industries where products must be approved for sale)
• Ensuring and documenting compliance to industry or customer quality processes
• Improving customer satisfaction and response to customer complaints
• Reducing the cost of poor quality
• Minimizing corporate risk
  
• Applying lessons learned from product use to enhance product designs (closing the loop in the product lifecycle)

Quality lifecycle management includes managing the quality of the product as well as the quality of product-related processes. One quality lesson we have learned as an industry over the years is that managing quality in through inspection is not as effective as managing quality in by design and through good process. For that reason, managing quality processes is as important as managing results.

One example of a QLM process is managing product quality in design by correcting problems before they surface with approaches like Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA). FMEA (specifically design FMEA, or DFMEA) is a great example of where QLM can help because it can directly impact product quality, but can also impact time to market and compliance. FMEAs are mandated in certain industries and by some customers, and can delay product launch if not available (although hopefully we aren’t putting them together at the end of product development, but actually using them in the beginning). Corrective and Preventive Action (CAPA) is another example of a process that attempts to close the loop in the product lifecycle, by tying actual quality issues back to be addressed in earlier phases of the lifecycle (through another design revision or modified manufacturing plans, for example).

How does it Fit in the PLM Ecosytem?

There are a number of competing and complementary solutions that can help manage product and process quality. These include specialized Quality Management Systems (QMS) in addition to ERP, Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) and QLM. In the ideal scenario, I would place the majority of the quality planning functions in PLM, which probably requires a PLM/QLM hybrid. Then, the execution would be tracked in ERP/QMS and fed back into a QLM capability in PLM to close the loop. Unfortunately, most PLM systems do not have needed QLM capabilities, let alone a solution that can compete with standalone applications. To be fair, two PLM solutions that I know have invested in these capabilities Agile and Aras. QMS also plays an important role, typically adding strong analytics capabilities to monitor and improve product and process quality. Of course, QMS solutions are also a logical choice to provide QLM capabilities. In short, the landscape is full of good solutions to choose from, but it takes some work to sort it all out. For more on the expansion of PLM solutions into related processes, please see PLM, Please Take 3 Giant Steps Forward.

Implications for Manufacturers

Manufacturers today can’t afford the risk and cost associated with poor quality. In most industries, the base quality of products has improved pretty dramatically over the past decade. And for many industries (such as Medical Devices or Pharmaceutical) there are mandatory processes that must be complied with.  So managing quality is not optional, it is a cost of doing business. The area where I see an opportunity for manufacturers to gain an advantage of their competition, however, is to apply quality management concepts to the product lifecycle – closing the loop between product design and the rest of the lifecycle. This is where the opportunity for QLM really comes into play.

So that’s what I learned, I hope you found it interesting. What do you think? I will follow up with more from the vendors later this week.